It’s been a while since I last left any impressions here. (Please don’t count). If you stopped by all that while, thanks for the magnanimity of not confronting me with “why”...Why have you tired out so soon? Why are you not living up to your own promise? Why…?
You know what? I was wondering whether anybody really cared. I was wondering why I got no reactions for four weeks in a row. But I got my wake-up call from the program I use to send out our weekly e-news. They made it possible for me to track and see that folks have indeed been visiting. Thanks for stopping bye.
Problem is, I only send out the e-news to faithful Anglicans, and Anglicans are good, good consumers. As a friend of mine said recently, we Anglicans come to church early to “secure the back seats” so we can relax and watch.
I know it is difficult, but may I encourage you not to do that here. May I encourage you not just to look around but to find ways to engage and be an active participant in our community? Henceforth, I’ll be making the discussions here are user friendly as possible-no theologising or philosophising. We’ll be talking about ourselves in the most honest and simple expressions possible to bring the weekly gospel readings alive among us. Yes! These are stories of events that took place more than two thousand years ago. How do they relate to us in our present realities?
Maybe in telling our stories and recounting our understanding and experiences of the gospel, we could at the same time be relating to what is happening in the life of some other reader somewhere. We could at the same time be quenching the thirst in someone in ways we cannot even think of or know. That is one big plus of this virtual age.
We all experience Christ in different ways daily. If you have had occasion to say “thank you Jesus,” or “thanks be to God,” for any reason in your life, that is a Jesus moment that you need to share for the benefit of others. So is it for what in human language we see as the opposite. Those times when you feel that it only rains on you. When we ask: “Why me, God?” “Why have you allowed this to happen to me?” …and so on. You need to let us know when the gospel message relates to your feelings of sadness or joy.
Do you realize how much people feel and live in isolation, and fear and loneliness in this age? It may well be that your testimony or just some honest random rambling may well speak to their situation and bring them to the knowledge that their experiences are nearly not as isolated as they believed they were.
It is selfless to speak up and discuss where you are in your Christian journey. Talk about how the gospel touches you, what you think, what hurts and what helps as a source of comfort. Don’t ever allow yourself to fall into the pit of what may well be the worst apostasy of this generation that “faith is private.” It is not. Christian Faith gives utterance.
That is LEADERSHIP. In doing that, you are serving others to a large extent in our community. This is one way of making sense of our gospel reading for today: “Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Mark 9: 33-35
Or is it not?
In Sunday School lately we've been looking at Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and now Jacob. I am comforted by their stories - how spectacularly they messed up their lives in an attempt to live out God's plan, and how often He rescued them, dusted them off, and let them try again. In my own life I mess up in a million small ways, often realizing right after some action (or ommission) that THIS was not the right thing...and I awake each morning ready to try again. God is good! It's funny how I thought I knew the Abraham/Sarah story so well, and yet never looked at this aspect of their lives before - they too struggled with God's timing on things. How often I pray something like: Lord, I really trust you to handle this challenge in my life, but could you please do that by Thursday, because if you haven't taken care of it by then, I'll have to do something about it" I can laugh when I write that, but it's something I do a LOT. And the good news for me is that Sarah did that too! Even to the extent that she sent Abraham off with Hagar - something I definitely won't be encouraging my husband to do! One of the many bonuses of teaching Sunday school - we're never to old to find something new in the bible!
ReplyDeleteBlessings, Dawn